Drama and the Theatre Collection
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Project aim
To improve the teaching facilities within the Department of Drama and to integrate a redeveloped Theatre Collection within the Department, ensuring its riches are widely available and protected for future generations.
Target
£1.5 million.
Recognising significant support
Naming the exhibition space, library and reading rooms.
Until now the Theatre Collection has been internationally renowned for the archives we hold, and this project will enable us to become internationally renowned for what we can actually do with them.
Jo Elsworth
Keeper of the Theatre Collection
Bristol has the leading Drama Department in the UK and housed within it a world-renowned Theatre Collection, but desperately needs better facilities to exhibit and protect this unique Collection.
Importance
Bristol was the first British university to teach Drama as an academic subject and has a history of innovation. At its heart is one of the world’s great theatre archives. This project is the most significant development for theatre history in the UK at this moment.
The Theatre Collection is a fully registered museum and internationally renowned centre for theatre research. It provides the nation with an accurate account of our theatrical past, and inspires and enables creative and innovative research of the future.
Impact
Funding to this project will enable the Collection to continue expanding, while also helping the department to maintain its position at the forefront of current theory and practice. It will support student and public access, through a digitisation suite for online archiving and publishing, and better display spaces.
Students, schoolchildren, academics, researchers, theatre practitioners and the wider public will all benefit from access to this priceless archive as it is brought to life and made properly accessible in a stimulating Theatre Museum.
Goal
£1.5 million is required to improve the Department of Drama's teaching facilities, and to unlock the potential of the Theatre Collection and open it up to a wider audience.